The business cards Estela Gonzalez made for herself are a no-frills proposition. “Estela Gonzalez” they say. “Professional Foster Parent.” They are like that because Gonzalez is like that. If it were up to other people, the title would be a lot fancier. “Child Whisperer,” perhaps. Or “Professional Miracle Worker.” Or maybe just, “Irreplaceable Person.”

Since 2004, Estela and her husband, Ruben, have taken more than 15 foster youth into their lives. Some of them have stayed with them for just a few nights, while others stayed for years. At the moment, their five-bedroom Mt. Helix house is home to three foster children and a former foster youth named Angel, a shy 13-year-old with autism and post-traumatic stress syndrome who Estela and Ruben adopted five years ago.

It is a full house, and with Estela in charge, there is room and love enough for everybody.

“She’s just got this very calm, graceful inner peace that resonates from her, and you feel it in the household,” said Teresa A. Stivers, executive director for Walden Family Services, ﻿a nonprofit agency that provides training, supervision and support to foster families throughout Southern California. “That is why she has been so good with all of the different kids who have come into her house. I am in awe of her.”

On a recent afternoon. one of the two elementary-school aged boys is in the living room working on the computer. Angel and the other boy are upstairs, and Chico, their impossibly calm Chihuahua is somewhere in the house making no noise whatsoever. Ruben is at General Dynamics NASSCO, where he is a supervisor. Estela is at the kitchen table, where she and her teen foster child have just wrapped up a meeting with the girl’s social workers.

Even on a busy day, the Gonzalez house feels like a refuge. The Professional Foster Parent is very good at keeping it that way.

“I always feel that everyone should do something to give back,” she said, closing the datebook that is fat with doctor’s appointments, Cub Scout meetings, wheelchair basketball games for the teen girl and the comings and goings of her three grown daughters and her three grandchildren. “But all I know how to do is be a parent.”

In 2004, Gonzalez was a retiree from the county’s Department of Social Services with time on her hands and a big house that needed filling. She and Ruben ended up at Walden, where they took foster-parenting training classes to prepare for the second chapter in their family lives.

Their first foster child arrived later that year, a teenage girl with phobias about everything from bridges to animal-print patterns. She stayed with them for two years. She is phobia-free now and living on her own. She keeps in touch.

More children followed. There was the rambunctious 9-year-old girl who arrived not knowing how to read and left two years later loving books and school. There are the boys living with them now, who have grown from ADHD-plagued whirling dervishes into award-winning students. There is the teen girl who learned to play wheelchair basketball and helps around the house.

Then there is Angel, who arrived as a skeletal 8-year-old whose lack of potty training was probably the least of her issues. With the blessing of her biological parents, the Gonzalezes adopted Angel a few years later.

“She has been very special ever since she moved in with us,” Estela says of Angel, who loves spaghetti and trying on makeup and is responsible for emptying the dishwasher’s silverware drawer and helping fold laundry. “We just fell in love.”

Ask her how she handles her special kids with their special needs, and the 58-year-old Gonzalez mentions all of the help she gets from her husband, her mother and her grown daughters. She talks about how Walden Family Services has given them everything from gas money and Christmas gifts to a wheelchair-friendly SUV and respite care when they need a break.

In return, she has donated a signed Picasso lithograph for the group to auction off during its Oct. 30 Wine D’Vine fundraiser. It is part of a collection Estela received as a gift from a friend, then promptly stashed under her bed because she had no idea these rolled-up artworks were valuable.

Now she knows, and she is thrilled this unexpected prize can help the group that helps her care for the treasures she loves the most.

“Doing this is very fulfilling, and I’m just so happy,” Gonzalez said. “It isn’t just me. It’s the kids, too. They are doing their part, and it is all about working together and accomplishing things together. It’s family.”